Sparrowvsrevolution writes: Malware that spreads via USB stick is an old trick. But researchers say they've spotted a more unique capability in the Flame malware recently tied to the creators of Stuxnet: piggybacking stolen data on the USB drives of oblivious users to smuggle it out of machines without an internet connection.

Instead of simply uploading stolen data to a remote server as traditional spyware does, Flame was also capable of moving the target information–along with a copy of itself–onto a USB memory stick plugged into an infected machine, wait for an unwitting user to plug that storage device into an Internet-connected PC, infect the networked machine, copy the target data from the USB drive to the networked computer and finally siphon it to a faraway server. “It turns users into data mules,” says Bogdan Botezatu, a senior malware analyst at Bitdefender, the firm that discovered Flame's USB drive technique.